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S2 Episode 5: Doin' Time
Doin’ Time builds directly on Episode 4, which ended with Max walking into the office in the Hubbard house and meeting Dr. Shoshanna Schoenberg. This episode begins continuing with the same scene. Max realizes that the therapist is a “new” (at least to him) alter. Dr. Schoenberg tries to get Max to talk to a chair representing Tara. At one point she sits in the chair and on her face we can see the struggle between the therapist alter and Tara. Dr. Schoenberg calmly tries to get Max to talk about Tara’s attempt to talk to him about “her alter’s recent transgression” and Max putting “the kibosh on the conversation.” “You need to look at you. In this world there givers and there are getters, and my real feeling here is that you need to explore becoming more of a getter if you want to get better.” Max blows up and says that Tara needs to pack a bag for the hospital.
Marshall and Kate are upstairs talking. Marshall shares that he is afraid to tell Courtney (his quasi girl friend) that he is gay because he does not want to hurt her. Like Max, Marshall is a people-pleaser, who does not want to make waves. Kate is discussing the video of Princess Valhalla Hawkwind she made with Lynda Frazier. She is excited, but we see a snippet of it on the web, and understand why people are making fun of her: it is ridiculously silly and poorly made. Kate tries to defend it rather unsuccessfully. She is smoking a joint when she and Marshall see the police pull up to their house. Kate is convinced that they are there to arrest her for marijuana possession. In a complete panic, she and Marshall flush the bag of marijuana down the toilet. They come downstairs and are mortified to see that it is Max who has been arrested, for his earlier assault on Sully. Tara and Charmaine are confused and upset. Tara starts to drive to the jail, which is twenty miles away, in order to bail out Max.
Charmaine, Kate, and Marshall go in to the house to have breakfast. Charmaine is focused on making pancakes rather than talking much about what has just happened. Kate is stoned, at first acting silly, then suddenly slumping down into a dark depression. She is serious when she says, “So. As a family, we are completely (pause) fucked.” We see again the turmoil that affects everyone in the house, and that Marshall and Kate having to cope as best they can without effective adult support.
As Tara is driving to the jail to bail out Max, she is terribly startled when she suddenly hears Dr. Shoshanna Schoenberg speaking to her from the passenger’s seat. In a panic, Tara swerves off the road and runs into a signpost. Tara becomes flustered and starts to call a tow truck without even checking the damage on the car. There is no observable damage, but Tara is not thinking clearly. After complaining that Tara made her spill her Tab drink on herself by swerving, Dr. Schoenberg tells Tara to slow down and to think. She pushed Tara to consider why the accident happened at this particular time. Tara realizes that it was an unconscious attempt “to avoid bailing Max out of jail, because he was going to commit me [to the hospital].” Dr Schoenberg tells Tara that Tara does not give herself enough credit; she says she wants to talk to Tara about the two little girls she saw in the hallway and in order to do so, “I’m gonna give you all the time that you need.”
Meanwhile, Max waits anxiously in jail for Tara to bail him out. Tara finally arrives at the jail about three hours later, far too long for a twenty mile trip. The officers tell her that Max was bailed out half an hour before she got there by Neil, Max’s partner and Charmaine’s occasional lover, and that Max “wasn’t very happy.” One officer sarcastically comments that Tara should check her messages more often. Given the fact that she had her phone with her and did not use it, and only arrived at the jail three hours after she started out, we presume that Tara has lost a couple of hours of time with Shoshanna Schoenberg.
Max and Neil go directly from the jail to the bar where Pammy works to have a drink. Neil points out to Max that his recent angry explosions are out of character and implies that Max’s anger has been displaced everywhere but “the one place it belongs,” that is, toward Tara. Pammy serves their table, which makes Max uncomfortable: he clearly wants to avoid her. Yet he chose to come to the bar where she works. He changes his mind and tells Neil to go ahead and leave without him, and he confronts Pammy. He starts with, “You know, that little thing you had with my wife?” Pammy retorts, “I don’t know your wife. I have a thing for Buck.” Max condescendingly gives Pammy cash as a “tip,” saying “thank you for not taking advantage of her (Tara) in her fragile state.” Pammy calmly advances and says provocatively, “Your wife tastes like rain,” and recites several other flavors bursting with sexual innuendo. She thrusts the money back in Max’s shirt pocket and walks away.
Meanwhile, Charmaine is at her doctor’s office for her first ultrasound. She is shocked to learn that her pregnancy is not as far along as she thought. It quickly dawns on her that her fiancée, Nick, was not in town during the time she got pregnant.
Back at home, Tara walks in after her interrupted trip to the jail, and tells Charmaine that she hit a sign. She omits any details about the cause. Shoshanna’s presence had startled her so profoundly that she had swerved off the road. Charmaine is focused on another matter: she immediately tells Tara that the baby is Neil’s, not Nick’s. The focus shifts to Charmaine’s dysfunctional relationships and devolves into a juvenile, giggly talk about Neil’s body and sex. It seems this prepubescent giddiness is the only manner in which Tara and Charmaine can discuss sexual issues, no matter how serious they are. Charmaine is clearly torn. She wants “Nick in my wedding picture and Neil on my wedding night.” She loves sex with Neil, but finds Nick the all around good looking man who is the façade that makes her feel respectable, while Neil is a great guy but not as attractive.
Tara then suddenly asks if Charmaine remembers a woman named “Mimi” from their childhood, a hint that Tara has again been having more memories. Charmaine says she does not remember anyone by that name. We assume that Tara and Shoshanna have been talking about “the two little girls,” and about the woman who met them at the door and commented on the state of Tara’s red poncho in Tara’s previous memory fragment.
Max storms into the house from the bar, furious with Tara for not coming to the jail to get him. He angrily shouts that after 17 years of their relationship, “it’s not fuckin’ workin’ anymore.” In exasperation, Max confronts Tara that Dr. Shoshanna Schoenberg is not real. Tara responds that years of therapy with other therapists have failed to help her get better, and Dr. Schoenberg is finally helping. She emphasizes that she is finally having memories, as though having memories in and of itself is a help. “If the measure of real is that she helps me figure things out…then she is real." This is a poignant statement from a person who has long avoided reality and does not know how to confront it. Tara tells Max that Dr. Schoenberg thinks that Max needs her to be sick: “It’s the only fucking thing that is holding us together!”
They are both sleepless that night, Tara in bed and Max on the couch. At 4:23 AM, Tara gets out of bed and saunters over to the Hubbard house, appearing serene. Max follows and sees her transition into Dr. Shoshanna Schoenberg. Shoshanna welcomes Max. Max asks for her confidentiality, again confusing the alters for separate people, and says, “I just want someone who will listen.” He is responding to Shoshanna as though she is real, just as Tara does, even though earlier he had shouted at Tara that this “doctor” was not real. He clearly is as confused as Tara. As he takes the patient’s chair, we see Tara sitting on the floor outside the office, listening in, yet another episode her growing co-consciousness with some of her alters.
Commentary
Tara’s alter, Dr. Shoshanna Schoenberg, seems to be a bridge between Max and Tara during this time of high stress between them. Can alters be used to help a relationship? Again, this is a complicated question. The very existence of alters in a person with DID adds risk and vulnerability to a relationship, as we have seen in the case of Tara and Max. However, at times, an alter can serve as bridge of connection, in more, and sometimes less, healthy ways. Shoshanna seems to have some insight that is helpful for both Tara and Max to share. She is able to communicate with both Max and Tara about their inner states in ways that neither one can do alone or with each other. This is unusual. More often, one alter communicates what another alter can not, will not, or is not even aware of. For example, a child alter will seek comfort from a partner, when the alter personality out most of the time would not. The child alter might get the attention of an otherwise unavailable or preoccupied partner. A sexualized alter might engage in sexual activity with a partner, when the alters most commonly in control cannot or will not, thus keeping a sexual relationship alive. Although we do not know yet, Dr. Shoshanna Schoenberg may be operating in the outside world to engage with Max in a way that is impossible for Tara. Tara has always been in the “sick” role in their relationship, and Max has been in a caretaker role. The emergence of Dr. Shoshanna Schoenberg may provide an opportunity for Tara to move toward a more adult relationship with Max. We shall see.
Dr. Shoshanna Schoenberg seems to be fairly balanced. Are alters that have a higher degree of functioning a sign of improvement? The answer is sometimes. Most of us know what mature behavior is, even if we do not generally act maturely, and can pull ourselves together to face certain challenges that require that mature behavior. Each person with DID is different. Some people have alters that grow in functioning as they improve; others perpetually create new alters, which, for the moment, appears to complicate their disorder. Generally the creation of a new alter is not a positive sign. We do not yet know if this alter, whether she is newly created or has existed internally and is only now taking on the persona of the real Dr. Schoenberg, is a sign of improvement for Tara. Tara and her other alters are a contradiction in self assertiveness. Tara and Alice have been overly subservient to Max (although it is clear that Alice plans to get her way regardless, with more indirect strategies). Buck and “T” have been aggressive, in-your-face rebels, even disowning the fact that they are married to Max. The emergence of Dr. Shoshanna Schoenberg shows us, for the moment, a calm, wise, rational, assertive woman. She has a range of feelings and behaviors, but there are no extremes. However, as with Alice, we may find out that she is “too perfect” and thus fatally flawed.
Tara tells Max that Dr. Schoenberg thinks Max needs her to be sick, as it is the only thing holding them together as a couple. Do partners or families actually “need” a person to continue to have DID? This is a complicated question. Few, if any, partners or families would ever intentionally want someone to remain sick. However, everyone in a family plays a role which has meaning in the family system and which maintains the status quo of the system, whether that is a healthy status quo or not. We have seen that Max needs to focus on Tara to avoid his own serious issues. His “need” to have her remain “sick” is obviously unconscious, but nevertheless, serves its purposes. It seems at this point in their marriage, their only major point of contact is around Tara’s alters and their escapades. Usually, no one in a dysfunctional family realizes the unconscious pressure to maintain dysfunctional roles; these roles continue on without ever being addressed. Families of any person who is significantly impaired may come to revolve around the impairment, whether it is mental or physical. The illness or disability can become the common glue that holds them together. The Gregsons identify themselves as the crazy family on the block: it is an identity that they promote in part because it sets them apart, but also because they recognize their dysfunction and making it a point of “pride” defends against their shame at being so dysfunctional. As long as Tara is “sick,” any and all problems within the family can be blamed on Tara’s alters, that is, her illness.
How can both Max and Tara act at one moment as if they know Dr. Shoshanna Schoenberg is an alter personality, and at the next moment act as if she were a completely separate person with a separateness and reality all her own? Is that nuts, or what? The capacity of the human mind to entertain two mutually incompatible perceptions at the same time is called “trance logic” in hypnosis research. It is not insanity. It is a particular mode of thought sometimes found in people who are highly hypnotizable, and people with DID are highly hypnotizable. On that basis, Tara’s alters can both know that they are aspects of Tara and firmly assert their own separateness, or fluctuate back and forth between realizing and not realizing their situations. Max may also be a highly hypnotizable individual, because about one out of six people are highly hypnotizable. However, it is also possible that after 17-plus years with Tara, he simply has become socialized to seeing the world through her eyes, and accommodated to her dissociative perceptions of reality to the point of adopting them. We may recall that in Season 1 Max at times spent “guy time” with Buck, watching porn, swilling beer, and according Buck a reality of his own.
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S2 Episode 6: Torando!
In Episode 6, Max continues to consult with Tara’s most recently surfacing alter, Dr. Shoshana Schoenbaum. He sees her in her “office” at the Hubbard house, where it appears she has offered Max a regular time and space for his feelings to be heard. He ventilates his disappointments about recent events with Tara. Finding out about Tara’s affair and lies was a setback for Max, who had thought things were going well and that “there was a light at the end of the tunnel for the first time in a long time.” The office has become a shared space where Tara can sit “outside” and listen in while her therapist/alter handles the interactions with Max. Dr. Schoenbaum for the moment is both a buffer and a conduit in their marital relationship, providing the couple with a modicum of observing distance to both speak (in the case of Max) and listen (in the case of Tara). For now, it seems to be helping, as Tara comments to Shoshana after Max leaves a session: “He’s trying so hard.” The office also represents a shared, transitional space for Tara’s self-experience in which she moves between her relationships with those in the external world and her relationships with her alters inside her mind. Tara tells Shoshana that she’s “the only alter she’s been so continuously co-conscious with,” providing viewers with a glimpse of how Tara is progressing and becoming less dissociative.
Several scenes following in which other characters in the show are learning about a tornado watch in the neighborhood. Back at the Gregson house, Marshall and Kate are both struggling to break free: Marshall from Courtney who proposes they are perfect for the “rich tradition of celibate power couples;” and Kate from Max who has grounded her despite her intention to accompany Lynda to a comic book store to make an appearance as Princess Valhalla Hawkwind. Everyone is trying to continue on with his/her individual business despite the news about the tornado (or, as the news inaccurately spells it, much to Marshall’s consternation, “torando”) warning. Max is taking the tornado watch seriously, telling neighbors Ted and Hannie “it could be big this time.” This surprises Ted, who notes that Max has been “pretty lax when these things have come through before,” a possible suggestion that Max seems more aware of problems than he has been in the past.
In the Gregson’s kitchen with Charmaine and Max, Kate demonstrates her advanced skills in adolescent rationalization and manipulation, as she minimizes the storm (and her father’s grounding of her) while trying to lure her aunt into enabling her by driving her to meet Lynda. Meanwhile, Max assumes he’s got his daughter on lockdown as he declares, “Don’t think about taking Hubbard’s car. I’ve got the keys.”
As Kate finishes her make-up in the bathroom, Marshall makes a determined effort to reach someone at the radio station on the phone to inform them of their spelling error, which he fears could endanger some of the most vulnerable citizens in Kansas for whom the word “torando” means nothing and who “will be the first to sail away when the mighty winds blow.” Kate sarcastically tells her brother “You are an inspiration, Moosh!” Her disillusionment with the adults in charge is transparently revealed as she announces to an invisible audience “And you say there are no heroes! Ladies and gentlemen - We have a homegrown hero right here in my bathroom!”
As the storm comes, Kate seems to share both Marshall and Max’s sense that something big is coming. She warns the group: “Prepare to be probed, earthlings!” (Little does she know that she is foreshadowing important events that will occur in the basement.) As the sky and wind become turbulent (with Kate in her dramatic Princess Valhalla costume and Charmaine in pigtails), the scene draws a strong but ironic set of visual allusions to the Wizard of Oz, with Charmaine (who is quite child-like and immature) resembling Dorothy, and Kate (who is trying to be grown up and powerful) demonstrating vague similarities to the good witch, Glynda.
As the storm cranks up, Max directs everyone to follow him to the Hubbard basement and we see the first of a series of instances in which Charmaine falls into a panic-stricken state. The word “basement” seems to have set something off in her as she freezes in the yard, at the top of the basement stairs, and a third time halfway down the stairs, each time nearly hyperventilating. Although it is unclear what her response is related to, we have to think that she is so clearly frightened of basements because of previous traumatic life experiences. Ted and Hannie soon join the Gregsons in the Hubbard basement and everyone gathers in a circle to wait out the storm. Charmaine continues to look terribly uncomfortable. Finally Marshall verbalizes what others are undoubtedly thinking by asking, “What’s the matter, Aunt Charmaine?” Although Charmaine protests that “it’s nothing,” Tara’s initially contained facade gives way and we see Tara begin to mirror Charmaine’s uncomfortable physical gestures, putting her hand to her throat while opening her mouth to take in a deep breath. Tara appears to be over-sympathizing and/or over-identifying with Charmaine’s discomfort and pain (probably something she learned to do when they were children), even to the point of absorbing some of Charmaine’s emotional experience. When Kate sarcastically and insensitively asks Charmaine, “Is it the prospect of confronting home canned veggies or the drains in the floor that set you off?” this proves to be way too much for Tara.
Tara’s initially calm demeanor finally surrenders to a series of rapid switches. We witness the appearance of some of her alters, starting with Buck and followed by Alice. It is notable that Buck’s appearance occurs at a time when Tara and Charmaine are clearly having difficulty. This repeats a pattern and dynamic that has been mentioned in previous episodes - Buck emerges when the girls are in danger and seems to be their protector. In fact, when Buck emerges he talks about going to the Home Depot so he can cover Pammy’s windows and protect another set of vulnerable girls from the effects of the tornado – Pammy and Pammy’s two girls.
Ted and Hannie are astonished as they witness with their very own eyes what they had only heard about before - Tara switching into her different personas. The sense of disbelief common about people having DID is captured beautifully when Hannie says slowly to the group “Oh my God, this thing is happening to your Mom.” Marshall quietly echoes in a faint robotic voice “…. thing is happening to my Mom.” When Alice appears, Max explains why they are in the basement. Alice rolls her eyes and says “I know why we’re down here Max - what do you think I am, a whore?” She emphasizes the word “whore;” as she does this, her face contorts and settles into a very hateful, frowning, almost witch-like look. Charmaine startles and exclaims to the group as if she couldn’t believe what she just heard: “Did she just say whore?!”
At this point, Tara’s body seems to go into a kind of convulsive state, somewhat reminiscent of other times we have seen Tara “transition.” The group in the basement reacts by recoiling backwards. When the convulsing stops and things become quiet, Ted looks at Max and asks “Is she done changing?” At this point Tara sits up straight, clearly having transitioned into a stronger, more confident persona. She crosses her arms over her legs and says in Shoshana’s exaggerated New York accent: “Well, that was a lot of mishugas!” Kate looks at her mother, stunned, and asks “Who the fuck is this?” Max introduces the new alter to Kate:, “This is your Mom’s new therapist, Shoshana Schoenbaum.” Charmaine puts her hands over her eyes, but Shoshana proceeds to attempt to conduct a group therapy session. Charmaine begs Max to “make her fucking stop” to which Max replies “I can’t Char. You know I can’t.” When Shoshana asks who would like to go first in the group, she looks inquisitively in the direction of Max and Charmaine. Charmaine gives her the finger.
Hannie and Ted appear to be entranced by Shoshana the therapist as Hannie tells her his story of adjusting to his arrival to the United States and of how Ted reminded him of a teacher at his British School. Shoshana notes this must have been comforting, using it to demonstrate how “choosing someone for safety can be comforting, but it can also lead to resentment over time …. a little” and she seems to be speaking to Max (and Tara) at this point. When Shoshanna quotes from her book about “love loving it all, but love has to see it, it can’t be left in the dark,” Kate seems to have had enough and demonstrates this by clapping loudly while sarcastically stating “Well I don’t know about you guys but I’m kind of grouped out.” Shoshana tries to address Kate’s anger, calling her Princess Valhalla outfit a pretty costume and asking “what’s really under all those costumes ….. Where’s Kate?” Kate abruptly jumps up and leaves the circle, upset and angered, “God, can’t we just take a minute? Give me a fuckin’ break!”
Several additional scenes in the basement follow, with Max trying to get an update on the weather through the short wave radio and Charmaine standing beside him, jiggling like a nervous little kid. Ted stands by, continuing to eat bagels as he comments that it’s pretty amazing actually how much Tara is like the real Shoshana.
Hannie and Marshall have gone to a corner and seem to be bonding as they commiserate about what a sad state of affairs prevails when those in charge of the news can’t even spell important words correctly. Marshall tries to explain his understanding of this surprisingly low standard in the American media to Hannie, but the way he explains it suggests that in doing so, he has probably explained the state of his own family’s dysfunction to himself: “I think it has something to do with freedom. We’re very free so we’re very free to be stupid.” It is a poignant moment: Marshall is clearly explaining in a parallel way the benefits of growing up in a free-spirited, albeit dysfunctional family. But Hannie sees through it, asks Marshall if he’s always been so smart and empathizes that “It must get exhausting.” Marshall acknowledges that “You kind of have to be [smart] around here, or the system eats you alive.” At this point the sound of Tara’s breathing intrudes (she now sits nearby in a lotus position), demonstrating what Marshall is talking about. Marshall shrugs his shoulders while clasping his hands tighter, acknowledging to Hannie that yes, “It is.” This acknowledgment of the stressful impact of Tara’s DID and the family dysfunction is in stark contrast to an episode in Season One when Tara asked Marshall if he liked their family “being different” because of the tumult created by her DID. At that point, Marshall enthusiastically exclaimed “I love it!” Now, the viewer can feel that the full weight of what goes along with being a member of the Gregson family has begun to descend upon Marshall. Having a mother who suffers DID can impose a terrible burden upon a child.
Kate continues to try and reach Lynda on her cell phone, and we slowly hear the radio play a series of 1950s songs. When Kate returns to the group circle, most are now dancing the twist. However, Charmaine continues to sit on the stairs in a daze, just waiting for the storm to pass so she can get out of the basement. Shoshana encourages Max to invite Charmaine to join the dancing, and when he declines, saying it’s best to “leave her be,” Shoshana confronts Max over one of the primary roles he plays in the family. She tells him that he is “not doing anyone any favors stopping things from happening.” And, in fact, in very short order, that’s exactly what Max tries to do. When Charmaine turns down Shoshana’s invitation to dance, Shoshana pushes on and starts a confrontation with Charmaine about lying, both lying in the present in terms of not admitting that it’s actually Neil’s baby she’s carrying, and lying in the past through “a pact you and Tara made.” Charmaine vehemently denies what Shoshana is saying while Max calls out for them to stop as he moves quickly towards them, just barely reaching Shoshana in time for her to faint into his arms and pass out.
The dramatic changes in lighting in this episode are often used to indicate that Tara is switching or on the verge of switching/changing her state of mind. Back at the “office” in the Hubbard house (which appears to be Tara’s internal vision of the office), Tara asks Shoshana why she made the statements she did in the basement. Shoshana replies that it’s simply time for the sisters to stop covering for each other “…. it’s time for Tara to come out of the basement.” Tara listens carefully, agrees, and the scene shifts back to the basement as Tara “comes to” in Max’s arms and stands up. Looking dazed at first, she gathers herself, and starts walking up the stairs out of the basement. Ted calls to her “But what about the tornado?” to which Tara replies “It’s over. Can’t you guys tell? The pressure’s changed,” and keeps on walking to the top of the stairs. She then turns and speaks to Max in a clear and steady voice. She says to him: “There is a light at the end of the tunnel Max. There is.” We sense these are words from Tara and Shoshana, working together.
In the final scene, we see Tara walking away through the rubble, past the wreckage of the tornado towards the sunlight, past fallen signs that say “Danger” and “Wrong Way.” The family emerges from the basement. Marshall expresses worry about his mother while Kate asks where her mother is going, and wonders if she’s coming back. Max reassures them confidently: “She’ll be back. She cares too much about you guys to just disappear.” We sense that this is the beginning of a new chapter for Tara and her alters, and for the Gregson family.
Commentary
In fairly rapid succession, Tara switches from one alter to another while the family is in the basement. Does this happen in DID, and does it really look like this? What causes this kind of rapid switching? Rapid switching between different alters does occur in DID, but it usually doesn’t look as dramatic as the switching we see in this episode. Although clients may display some subtle physical signs of switching (most typically blinking, eye movement, or change in posture), wild jerking movements while switching are quite unusual. It’s important to again remember that DID is a “disorder of concealment” in which most individuals with DID try hard to hide their switching so they can appear to have a unified sense of self. When rapid switching like this does happen, it typically takes place when there has been an unusual amount of stress that overwhelms the individual’s ability to cope. Tara could have become overloaded by the stress of the weather emergency, by seeing her sister distressed, or by being in a basement herself (although she does not state this overtly as her sister Charmaine does). Although her dramatic jerking movements are not characteristic of most individuals with DID, it is not unusual for people with DID to have physical reactions to stress that occur with switching, such as headaches, stomach aches, and shaking.
Some of the scenes in this episode seem to be about Tara’s interactions with actual people in her external life, whereas other scenes seem to blur the boundary between Tara’s external world and internal world. Is this common in DID, and how can it be understood?
This is a complicated question and has to do with how individuals with DID experience “reality.” Most individuals with DID experience confusion between external reality and internal events. Examples of this include being unsure whether something really happened or it was a dream; “coming to” in the middle of a conversation and not being sure whether something was an internal auditory hallucination or had been said out loud; experiencing perceptual confusion as to whether a person who is seen might be someone in the here and now, or an alter, or someone from the past seen in a flashback, or as an illusion that a person in the here and now might be a person from the past. These types of experiences can be very confusing to someone with DID as well as to those in relationships with the person who suffers this disorder, and can sometimes cause major relational problems (e.g., if someone with DID accuses another person of doing something that an alter did).
It is important to clarify that the blurring between internal and external realities does not mean the individual is psychotic and out of touch with reality. As children, individuals with DID have utilized a capacity for imagination to survive horrendous traumatic experiences. It is this capacity that they were able to tap into as children and draw upon in order to create their alter personality system or “third reality,” (a term coined by DID expert Dr. Richard P. Kluft). Although individuals with DID may hear voices in their minds or experience visual hallucinations, these symptoms are not psychotic or delusional in nature, but rather are connected to very real events that occurred in the past.
Through her therapist/alter, Shoshana, Tara breaks the rule of secrecy and confronts Charmaine about their pact as children. Would a therapist see this as progress? Some therapists might feel that this type of confrontation about a shared secret or pact would be considered progress in treatment because it indicates that the person is becoming less dissociative or less defensive and is more “ready” to deal with events that occurred in the past. However, other therapists, most therapists, would consider it a poorly-timed and potentially dangerous misadventure. It is not advisable that an individual confront someone from their past in this manner without doing significant preparatory work in therapy, and without taking the other person’s feelings and situation (and potential adverse reaction) into account. Confronting a family member, whether it is thought that the family member is a potential witness of important events or an alleged abuser, is a major event, and may bring about considerable distress and turmoil in the person with DID and the person being confronted. This already complicated issue is further confused by the possibility that the confrontation may not be based on historically accurate information. Charmaine just got engaged, is pregnant by someone other than her fiancée, and has just been through a period of intense discomfort and panic. However dramatic, Tara’s confrontation is unkind and potentially harmful. Confrontations bring with them many risks: the issues the DID patient raises may be denied, the DID patient may experience a painful rejection or invalidation, or the DID patient may get information which is beyond his or her capacity to handle. Confrontations may also create pain and turmoil for the confronted individual. Most therapists advise that confrontations be avoided because of their risky nature for all concerned, and recommend that if a confrontation is deemed necessary by a patient, it occur only when recovery is complete or nearly complete. Whether what she says is on target or not, Dr. Shoshana Schoenbaum’s approaches are too blunt and brutal to resemble good therapy. The confrontation promoted by Shoshana does not necessarily reflect progress but may reflect severe acting out by an alter who appears to be reasonable and normal.
During the confrontation of Charmaine about the secret pact, Shoshana offers a theory of how lying can begin in families, why it is perpetuated and how it becomes a habit. Is there any truth to what she said? Most children who are abused are threatened to not tell, or grow up with a family code of “what happens in the family stays in the family.” In dysfunctional families, particularly where abuse has occurred, children learn to cover up what is really happening at home through lies, fabricated stories, explanations, and other strategies. Lying about family events can be out of fear of retaliation, shame, or wanting to protect family members from consequences of their actions. Repetitive lying may develop in the service of survival.
Shoshana tells Tara ”it’s time for her to get out of the basement.” What does she mean? The basement seems to be a metaphor for Tara’s denial and concealment of her dissociation as well as the hiding of the truth of her past and her shared past with Charmaine as represented in their pact. However, the viewer also wonders (given Charmaine’s reaction to the basement) if the two sisters were abused in a basement, and if Shoshana is telling Tara she can “get out of the basement,” to indicate to her that she can eventually be free of her traumatic past. The true meaning of this metaphor will become clear as we continue to watch the series.
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